These muttonbirds are marketed as fresh or salted "Tasmanian squab." Various by-products, including oil, body fat, and feathers, are also sold. In 1968, a total of just under one-half million young birds were taken. Prices to the producers varied from $12 to $14 (Australian dollars) per hundred salted birds and $16 per hundred fresh birds. Stomach oil brought 75¢ per gallon. Assuming the average price per hundred birds to be $14, the meat alone was worth about $70,000 per year to the producers. The retail value was of course much higher. Although the muttonbird harvest is no longer the mainstay of the Flinders Island economy, according to Serventy (1969) it is still a picturesque and important annual social event.
Serventy et al. (1971) believed the commercialization of the muttonbird preserved its numbers: "Had there been no vested interests to preserve the 'birding islands' as such, many of them would in the course of time have been 'improved' as sheep stations and the shearwater populations would have declined and vanished."
Sooty Terns
The Caribbean is the home of the world's most important wild egg producer—the sooty tern. In some years about 2 million sooty tern eggs from the Seychelles and 0.6 million from Morant and Pedro bays have reached Caribbean markets (Tuck 1960).
Eiders and Murres
Although the shooting of birds is not as important economically to Greenland's approximately 50,000 residents as are sealing, whaling, and fox hunting, the harvest of seabirds is an ancient tradition that still means production of an important food source that the many Greenlanders could not exist without. About 30 species of marine birds are harvested for human consumption, eider ducks and murres being by far the most important. In west Greenland about 750,000 birds (equivalent to about 825 tons of meat) and 10,000 eggs are harvested annually. Murres constitute the main dish in summer at small coastal outposts with access to rookeries. Great quantities are also dried and salted for use in winter. Murre canneries at Upernavik have supplied southern cities with the frozen meat of about 25,000 to 30,000 murres annually. However, this commercial activity would be prohibited by a proposed new Greenland game law (Salomonsen 1970).
Banding has shown that about 22% of Greenland's eider population, or about 150,000 birds, is shot annually. Collecting of eider eggs is now prohibited except in the Thule District, where 10,000 are taken annually. Eider down is still collected from nests for sale to a trading company for the manufacture of much demanded eider-down coverlets (Salomonsen 1970).
A growing human population, the widespread use of modern firearms, and the increasing use of speedboats in hunting have resulted in serious declines in many of Greenland's marine bird populations. The Greenland government has demonstrated its concern by instituting protective measures in response to Danish expert advice. For example, the common puffin (Fratercula arctica) was given 10 years of total protection in 1961 after bird numbers had seriously declined as a result of over-harvesting of the birds and their eggs (Lockley 1973). This protection was extended in 1970. Also, it is now illegal to discharge firearms at most marine bird rookeries in Greenland.
With protection of bird habitats from human intrusion and toxic environmental pollutants, adequate enforcement of sound conservation laws, greater efforts in conservation education, and scientific regulation of harvests, Greenland's valuable marine bird resource could probably withstand intensive utilization indefinitely (F. Salomonsen, personal communication). Salomonsen has been quick to point out, however, that people should not be encouraged to believe that the value of seabirds for food is the only reason they should be saved.
Although several species of marine birds serve as sources of food in the Soviet Union, down of eider ducks and eggs of murres are considered to be the most important to the economy. These birds are referred to as trade birds due to their commercial importance (Belopol'skii 1961).